Northwest Voices | Letters to the Editor

Welcome to The Seattle Times' online letters to the editor, a sampling of readers' opinions. Join the conversation by commenting on these letters or send your own letter of up to 200 words letters@seattletimes.com.

Streetcars kept in storage

Seattle Mayor Bertha Landes plays motorman as she sets the trolley on one of the city's red streetcars that made a bargain "loop" through the downtown business area in 1927.

Alternative solutions

Thank you Erik Lacitis for your story about George Benson’s forgotten streetcars [“Classic streetcars stuck at dead end,” page one, June 18].

What kind of “vision” is Seattle trying to create, and why is it relying on a New York landscape-architecture firm? Remember how it tried to revamp Pike Place Market.

I wonder why room can’t be found for a track along the waterfront connecting Myrtle Edwards Park with Occidental Square. Maybe we need to move a couple of sculptures to the Seattle Center, and make room for a maintenance barn. The streetcars were sure handy to travel the waterfront — and what a great tourist draw.

I bet more people would use these “art on wheels” than currently go to the Olympic Sculpture Park.

— Howard Slauson, Lynnwood

S.O.S. — Save our streetcars

Congrats to The Seattle Times for publishing Erik Lacitis’ article on the Seattle streetcar dilemma.

These elegant Tasmanian mahogany and white-ash cars were a joy to behold, a pleasure to ride and an icon of elegance in our city. They projected an image of color, gracefulness, refined quality and even a sense of humor to our somewhat dreary waterfront. And they were a remarkable tourist attraction.

The waterfront streetcars can provide ready connectivity to our sculpture park, the cruise lines and waterfront conference center, to our formidable restaurants and commercial establishments, to our new 175-foot high Ferris wheel, to Safeco and CenturyLink fields and to the International District.

Rather than be confined to history, they should be revived and allowed to pursue a second coming. They would contribute greatly to the creation of a revitalized, exciting and attractive Alaskan Way.

— Leo Sreebny, Seattle

Ready to take a stand

A former streetcar conductor says “I think they’re going to make them disappear in the middle of the night” — not without a fight!

Those streetcars rapidly gained a following among us locals; they became a beloved part of the waterfront ambience, the tourists loved them and at least one movie was made that featured them.

We’ve waited patiently while one excuse after another has been erected for their disappearance: The car barn didn’t fit in with the museum’s plans, a proposal for a new car barn near Pioneer Square fell through, the architects tell us that they don’t fit in with the plans for a new waterfront parkway. (I can’t imagine anything that would fit in better than those streetcars).

This is one issue on which I’m ready to take a stand with my wallet in hand — and I bet it’d cost slightly less than the voter-rejected proposals for stadium after stadium.